Before You Assign Your Florida Insurance Claim to a Contractor: The Fee-Shift Risk to Understand

Before You Assign Your Florida Insurance Claim to a Contractor: The Fee-Shift Risk to Understand

If you are a Florida homeowner with a damaged roof, a flooded kitchen, or a water-stained ceiling, a contractor may have offered to take your insurance claim off your hands. Sign here, they say, and we will deal with the insurance company for you. It sounds like relief. But a decision issued this week by Florida's Third District Court of Appeal is a reminder that when a property insurance claim goes to court in this state, somebody can end up owing the other side's legal bill, and the paperwork you sign at the start helps determine who that somebody is.

You do not need to become a lawyer to protect yourself here. You do need to know that the choices you make early, before anyone files anything, carry real financial weight.

What the court actually decided

The case is Father & Son Carpet Cleaning & Restoration, etc. v. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, No. 3D24-1779, decided by the Third District Court of Appeal on July 15, 2026. You can read the full opinion on the Florida courts website or on CourtListener. It is short, roughly three pages, and it is worth understanding.

According to the opinion, this was a first-party property insurance dispute that started in the County Court for Miami-Dade County. The appellant was Father & Son Carpet Cleaning & Restoration, appearing "as the assignee of Silvia Perez," the homeowner. In other words, the homeowner had assigned her claim to the restoration company, and the company, not the homeowner, was the party in court against Citizens Property Insurance Corporation.

The company lost at the trial level, and the trial court entered a final judgment awarding attorney's fees and costs to Citizens. The company appealed. Importantly, the opinion states that the "appellant only disputes the amount awarded, not fee entitlement." The fight on appeal was never about whether Citizens should get fees at all. It was only about how much.

The Third District affirmed. The panel wrote that it was doing so "to reiterate the unremarkable but long-standing principle that, absent a showing of fundamental error, which is conspicuously lacking on this truncated record, preservation requires a contemporaneous objection to the challenged evidence." The court found that the appellant "neither raised a timely and specific objection nor moved for rehearing contending the factual findings were deficient," pointing to Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.530(a), which the opinion quotes as requiring that "to preserve for appeal a challenge to the failure of the trial court to make required findings of fact in the final judgment, a party must raise that issue in a motion for rehearing under this rule."

Because the objection was not preserved, the appellate court treated the argument as waived and affirmed the fee award. The opinion notes on its face that it is "not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing," so the matter is not necessarily over.

Why this matters to you as a Florida policyholder

Two things in this decision deserve your attention.

First, fee-shifting in Florida runs both directions now. For decades, Florida law contained a one-way attorney fee provision that generally let a policyholder who beat their insurer recover fees from the carrier. The Legislature changed that landscape. Today, section 624.1552, Florida Statutes provides that the offer of judgment provisions of section 768.79 "apply to any civil action involving an insurance contract." That means an insurer can make a settlement offer, and if the policyholder's side rejects it and then does not do well enough at trial, the policyholder's side can be ordered to pay the insurer's fees. The opinion in Father & Son does not say which provision produced the fee award in that case, and this article does not suggest that it did. The general point stands on its own: in Florida, losing a property insurance lawsuit can cost you more than the claim itself.

Second, an assignment of benefits transfers the risk along with the claim. When you sign an AOB, the contractor steps into your shoes. In Father & Son, that is exactly what the caption reflects. The company, not the homeowner, was on the hook for the fee judgment and on the hook for preserving objections to it. Whether an AOB shields you or exposes you depends entirely on the words in the agreement you sign, including any indemnity or hold-harmless language the contractor may have included. Read it. Have someone read it with you.

There is a third lesson buried in the procedure. The court never evaluated whether the fee amount was fair or excessive, because it never got that far. The objection was not made at the right time in the right way at trial, so the appellate court did not reach the question. That is how preservation rules work in every Florida court, and it is why what happens at the trial level, long before an appeal is ever contemplated, tends to decide the case.

Practical steps you can take

None of this means you should abandon a claim you believe in. It means you should go in informed.

• Read the assignment before you sign it. Ask what happens if the lawsuit against the carrier is unsuccessful, and get the answer in writing.
• Ask about your policy's other options. Many Florida policies include appraisal or mediation provisions that resolve valuation disputes without litigation and without offer-of-judgment exposure.
• Take any settlement offer from your insurer seriously. Under section 768.79, rejecting an offer has consequences that depend on what happens later. That is a decision to make with counsel, not alone.
• Keep your own records. Photographs, receipts, adjuster correspondence, and repair estimates are what a claim is built on, whether or not a contractor is involved.
• Ask questions early. A conversation before you sign is worth far more than an argument after a judgment.

A note on what this article is

This is general information about a recent Florida appellate decision. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every policy is different, every loss is different, and outcomes in other cases do not predict what would happen in yours. The Father & Son decision was not final at the time of publication.

Talk to Louis Law Group

Louis Law Group represents Florida policyholders and consumers. We do not represent insurance companies. If your property claim has been denied, delayed, or underpaid, or if a contractor has asked you to sign an assignment of benefits and you are not sure what it means, we are available to review your situation and discuss what options may be available under your policy and the facts of your loss. Contact Louis Law Group to schedule a consultation.

Sources

• Father & Son Carpet Cleaning & Restoration, etc. v. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, No. 3D24-1779 (Fla. 3d DCA July 15, 2026) (also available via CourtListener)
• Section 624.1552, Florida Statutes
• Section 768.79, Florida Statutes
• Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.530(a), as quoted in the opinion above